Biden says he regrets using the word “illegal” in reference to an undocumented immigrant

During President Biden‘s State of the Union address on Thursday, there was a moment in which he engaged in a back and forth with Marjorie Taylor Greene on the subject of Laken Riley, referring to Jose Antonio Ibarra — the man charged with the Georgia student’s murder — as “an illegal,” which he received a considerable amount of backlash for. In an interview with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC on Saturday, Biden expressed regret for his use of the word, saying, “I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal’; it’s ‘undocumented.’” 

Bringing up Trump’s frequent use of the word “vermin” to describe immigrants, and his racist cautionary tales of them “polluting the blood,” Biden contrasted his views on the matter to further apologize, saying, “What I won’t do. I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect . . . Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing. We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share his view at all.”  

As The New York Times highlights in their coverage of Biden’s interview, “The president’s reply went further than when he was first asked about the matter by reporters on Friday. He did not explicitly take back the term at that point, noting that the immigrant charged in the murder in Georgia was ‘technically not supposed to be here.'”